Saturday, August 16, 2014

I screwed up! The cube for the $44,000 to $46,000 category was made 6 x 6 with a depth of 5". So I added a square grid (green color) of 9 x 9 with a depth of 6". "There are no mistakes, just a reason to improve"--probably a rationalization or in my case, a cover up. It does add interest though.
The countries are Finland ($45,741), Ireland ($46,032), Netherlands ($46,073), Austria ($46,604) and Japan ($46,838). Population is nearly 163 million : 2.3% of the world's total.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Another view of the panel : In the far left background is the cube representing New Zealand, United Kingdom and France with a total population of 134,000,000. The GDP per capita range is between $38,000 and $40,000. The cube is 8 inches square with a height of 5 inches. The taller one just to its right is Switzerland alone in the $80,000 range

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Here is a letter from our soil collector David Basasira in Uganda. It's dated October 23rd, 2005. And describes the Bulange Village, site of the collection. David is an artist. Take a look at his work at link below letter.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

More build-up of cement. The block on the left is 5" square with a height of 3.75 inches. A GDP per capita range of $28,000 to $30,000 of two countries, Puerto Rico and Spain, about 50,000,000 population.

The taller one (12.75 inches) just on its right is Norway, $100,000 with 5,000,000 people. Ready to move?

Friday, July 4, 2014

More layering with color. The large piece represents a population of over 1.6 billion people. And is 29 square inches standing 1 inch, in the $6,000 to $8,000 level. Among the 18 countries are : China, Cuba, Peru, Turkmenistan, Botswana, Iran, South Africa and Romania. The full list is on a previous post.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Each of the incremental increases in GDP at $2,000 increments were then added by populations. For example, countries and populations from $128 (Somalia) to $1,837 (Solomon Islands) totaled 2,725,625,971---30 countries. And the level from $38,000 to $40,000 totaled a population of 133,357,315 (New Zealand, United Kingdom and France).

Each of these GDP per capita population categories are then converted to square size for the "canvas". The total area for 7 billion population is depicted in 4'x6' feet (3456 sq. in.). So if the first level of 0-$2,000 has a population of over 2.7 billion the canvas square is 36.66 inch representation or 39% of global population (.39 x 2.7 billion). Level $34,000 to $36,000 with 60,917,978 will have a square of 5.48 inches or about 1%.

We now factor in each square, GDP per capita levels. A $2,000 increment will add 1/4 of an inch in depth. For example level $50,000 to $52,000 will have a block thickness of 6.5 inches.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

The next step organized the data by GDP per capita, country and population. The incremental categories were in steps of $2,000. For example, Somalia began the first level ( 0 to $2,000 ) at $128 with Solomon Islands ending it at $1,837. The population is 2,725,625,971 in this first level comprising 56 countries.
The fourth level of $6,000 to $8,000 reached a population of 1,623,268,751 with 18 countries. The categories continued and finally ended with Liechtenstein at $158,977 and a population of 36,656 in 2012.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

I am reviewing and editing the Gross Domestic Product numbers for each of the 193 UN Member States. The statistics can come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the United Nations or the CIA World Factbook. After comparing each of these sources, the UN seemed to be the most consistent. (step one). A file was created with UN Member State, population and GDP per capita. All of the data was entered "one by one".

All of this data has been incorporated in a "study" piece on a 4' x 8' panel. Of course, this effort is to better understand how it will be embedded in the final 196 panels. And over the next few weeks, I will post the progress of this effort.